Rabbit Blood

Chapter 12 - Practice

Leslie left the shower in a cloud of steam, having washed away all evidence of her morning jog, and grabbed her towel. Since Ginerva's pep-talk, she took every opportunity to be naked and 'get used' to her body.

She wasn't there yet.

Leslie still hated the fur, and missed her old, comparatively beautiful body, and part of her wondered if self-acceptance wasn't a slippery slope to pridefulness. Kain did tell her pride was the worst sin of all. Maybe she shouldn't get too comfortable.

But progress was being made. It wasn't all bad, she tried telling herself. With a universally fuzzy pelt, there was no need to shave. Since she lost her tresses, the drying time after a shower was fractional (though she did need to wring out her tail). And sometimes, maybe twice a month, she'd see her reflection and not hate it on sight. Leslie tended to focus on the eyes. They remained large, round, orangey-hazel, and she could just make out the old Leslie smiling through. Windows to the soul, are those little peepers.

o - o - o - o - o

As for her part in the talent show, Leslie was content to lean on another past routine, for convenience's sake. Her usual choreographing process took too long: she'd film herself as she improvised, salvage the better moves and string them together in a narratively interesting way. There was no time for that. There was barely time to practice at all, not since she'd picked up an extra shift.

When she was free, Leslie retreated to the abandoned room to run through the routine, or dance for its own sake. Alastor usually left her alone in this room, thank God; his constant barrage of smug attagirl winks were starting, as her mom would have said, to get on her wick.

Of course, he didn't always give her space to practice. Just yesterday, he barged into the abandoned room - or studio, whatever - and made her embarrassed. It started innocently enough with more terrible jokes from him.

"Why is it always puns?" she groaned, throwing a sock at him.

"Because 'brevity is the soul of wit'!" quoth Alastor, dodging the sock with ease. "Hamlet, second act. A quick joke, told well-"

"Yes, I know what it's from!" she lied. "But the dad jokes aren't witty. They just make everybody hate you!"

Alastor gave a mischievous chuckle, so she had to assume that was the point. "While we're trying to understand one another," he said, "why the awful tunes? The stuff that's barely music at all, with those... what do they call that waiting period before the wall of noise in place of a chorus?"

"The drop?"

"Yes! Why that kind of music? For want of a better word."

Indignant, Leslie stormed across the room to fetch her phone. She'd show him. "Alright," she said, switching to a different, yet similar song from her extensive playlist, "lemme put this in a way you might get. Say you're going to explode someone with your powers. It takes a while to charge up, I'm guessing?"

"Not really!"

"Come on. You have all that power at your fingertips, all the time?" Leslie argued. Shit, maybe he did. She tried to remember how quickly Alastor shocked the leathery Egg Boi as it came to life.

"I'm not telling you about my powers," he tutted. "You had your chance during our quid pro quo!"

Had she? God, that seemed so long ago. "Well," Leslie said, finding an open space, "for the sake of argument, imagine needing time to charge up. That's what the drop's about." She demonstrated as the song's build section came in. Crouching low and rising, rising with the synthesized pitch, she kept her core strong, her arms straight and tensed. It was coming up through the floor. She prepared for what was next, bracing her neck and shoulders, winding up. Then came the break - 4, 3, 2, 1! - and Leslie threw her head forward in a headbanging motion, then bounced back and swung into a hard shuffle.